Alden and the major followed their chief to the companion.  All three descended the ladder, which hung inward and away from them at a sharp angle.  They reached the strangely inclined floor of the main corridor, and, bracing themselves against the port wall, worked their way aft.

Not all the admirable discipline of the Legion could prevent some confusion.  Such of the men as were on duty in pilot-house, pits, wireless, or engine-room were all sticking; but a number of off-duty Legionaries were crowding into the main corridor.  Among them the Master saw Leclair and Rrisa.  No one showed fear.  The white feather was not visible; but a grim tension had developed.  Death, imminent, sobers the boldest.

From the engine-room, shouts, orders, were echoing.  The engine-room door flung open.  Smoke vomited—­thick, choking, gray.  Auchincloss reeled out, clutching at his throat.

“What chance?” the Master cried, staggering toward him.

“If—­the fire spreads to the forward petrol-tanks, none!” gasped the chief engineer.  “Aft pit’s flooded with blazing oil.  Gorlitz—­my God!”

“What about Gorlitz?”

“Burned alive—­to a crisp!  I’ve got four extinguishers at work.  Two engines out of commission.  Another only limping!  And—­”

He crumpled, suddenly, dropping to the metals.  The Master saw through the clinging smoke, by the dimmed light of the frosted disks, that the skin of the engineer’s face and hands was cooked to a char.

“If he’s breathed flame—­” began the major.  Alden knelt beside him, peered closely, made a significant, eloquent gesture.

“Volunteers!” shouted the Master, plunging forward.

Into the fumes and smother, half a dozen men fought their way.  From the bulkheads they snatched down the little fire-grenades.  The Master went first.  Bohannan was second, with Rrisa a close third.  Leclair in his forward rush almost stumbled over Alden.  The “Captain,” masked and still unrecognized as a woman by any save the Master, was thrust back from the door by the Celt, as she too tried to enter.

“No, not you!” he shouted.  “You, with only one arm—­faith, it’s worse than useless!  Back, you!” Then he and many plunged into the blazing engine-room.

Thus they closed with the fire-devil now licking ravenous tongues about the vitals of Nissr.

CHAPTER XIX

HOSTILE COASTS

An hour from that time, the air-liner was drifting sideways at low altitudes, hardly five hundred feet above the waves.  A sad spectacle she made, her wreckage gilded by the infinite splendors of the sun now lowering toward the horizon.  Her helicopters were droning with all the force that could be flung into them from the crippled power-plant.  Her propellers—­some charred to mere stumps on their shafts—­stood starkly motionless.